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A common lament of journalists is that journalism in the digital age is becoming ever more like an assembly line job, its practitioners expected to produce ever more pieces of content to be distributed across ever more platforms using ever less time and resources.

But if the news industry is a factory, it's a pretty inefficient one. While a slaughterhouse turns every scrap of "mechanically separated" gristle into delicious hot dogs, reporters seldom find a use for their leftovers. Hours of recorded interviews become a few quotes in a finished article. The rest might provide fodder for a book project somewhere down the road; more likely, it will gather virtual dust on a microcasette or a hard drive.

To David Gerlach, this wastefulness looks like an opportunity. His nonprofit start-up, Blank on Blank, seeks to create compelling original content out of raw material that everyone has but no one knows what to do with.

Blank on Blank's pitch to journalists is simple: When you're done with a story, give us the tapes or digital recordings of your interviews; we'll listen to them, and if there's something we can turn into a story for radio or podcast, we'll do it. "It's about helping journalists realize the value of the content they already have," says Gerlach, a former "Good Morning America" producer. "You use four quotes in your story and then you put it away -- to me, that's a shame."

Gerlach started Blank on Blank in 2010. Last month, he launched an appeal on Kickstarter to get out the word about it, asking users of the crowdfunding site to donate $10,000 and 30 interviews. "The money is a secondary thing," says Gerlach. "I did it more as a marketing exercise and a way to get content."

A finalist in the 2011 Knight Foundation News Challenge, Blank on Blank has already produced interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Allen Ginsberg and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. Its weekly show, launched in May, is available as a free podcast and distributed through Public Radio Exchange, the same distributor as "The Moth Radio Hour" and "WTF with Marc Maron."

Soon, Gerlach hopes to begin offering select segments as a channel on YouTube, accompanied by animation and underwritten by corporate sponsors. Blank on Blank being a non-profit, money it makes this way will ultimately flow back to the journalists who provide the audio. While Gerlach hopes reporters will want to be active participants in having their interviews turned into radio, it's not a requirement.

After all, if they had the time, they wouldn't need something like Blank on Blank in the first place. "All you have to do is get us the tapes," he says. "We'll take it from there."